The Jewel Trader Of Pegu (21 page)

—
Nandabayin believes it enough to offer gold and bow his head as a
vassal. He thinks he will survive to fight again, but his head will roll in the dust. I won’t be here to see it,
Win said.

Antonio agreed.
—You needn’t know how to read the stars or the
innards of a dead goat to know the future will bring blood and sorrow to
this doomed city.

Win has shed the hopes that clouded his vision. He and Antonio see the fires of Sodom and Gomorrah. The princes and generals of Toungoo won’t be content with a handful of bangles or a legion of slaves. Their king is a weak man who sleeps fitfully, afraid more of his followers’ plotting than he is of the Mon of Pegu. He will appease his retainers and let them ravage the city and take what they can. Thousands of horses and bullocks will drag away carts heavy with the riches of sacked palaces and pagodas. If we stay, we will be choked by dust and trampled beneath the hooves of elephants tromping under the weight of chests and bags filled with gold, rubies, and sapphires.

Antonio takes no pride in the dark picture he paints, in the predictions he is sure will come to pass. Win can only shake his head in agreement. The Arakans, slow to arrive, will take out their fury at the greed of their ally and will strip the city bare of anything the Toungoo in their haste leave behind. Then, Antonio says, they will set the city aflame. —
I can smell the smoldering timbers already, the
burning bodies of the innocent.

We all leave in three days’ time. Win and his family will travel with Mya and me to her village, and if we are not welcomed there by her father and her relatives, we will travel on to the village where Win’s cousins live. We will stay until the future is clear, praying that the dark visions we harbor prove false. If they are not, we will wait, live as best we can in the countryside, and return to the city when the embers have turned cold.

Antonio will go south to Martaban and from there start a long journey to a destination that wasn’t in his plans until tonight. May God, his Rock, protect him—he goes to Venice with our jewels and all the letters I have written since leaving India’s shore. I didn’t have to be the insistent supplicant I had feared. Little did I think when I first saw this rough-looking man, scarred and martial, that I would entrust him, as I would a brother, with our family’s fortune. I must trust him if I am to fulfill my obligations to Uncle. If you are reading this letter, then my trust was not betrayed. I believe him to be a man whose “yes” is really “yes” and whose “no” is really “no.” I sold him stones for reals, as we had originally agreed, and came to an arrangement for Uncle to pay him a fair but handsome amount for bringing back our jewels. This arrangement and a complete inventory of the stones entrusted to him are in the letter to Uncle that I include with this one. I have full faith that Antonio and Uncle will honor the arrangements that I have made. I have kept some jewels—these too are listed for Uncle—and will carry a portion with me along with some reals into the jungle; the rest Win and I will bury under his house. I take the jewels to buy our safety from brigands, though these soulless men may take our lives as well as our jewels. I can do no more than this and pray to the Holy One, blessed be the All Merciful, to protect us in our exodus through the wilderness. Mya and the child whose heart beats within her are all the treasure that matters to me.

If Antonio arrives safely with the stones, then Uncle will find no fault with my decision, the arrangements made, and the explanation offered. Jewels are of little value compared to the woman by my side; but Uncle has risked much of his fortune to procure the stones, and I must fulfill my obligations to him. If I were to keep them here until it’s safe for me to return, his well-being and the well-being of all who depend on him would suffer greatly. All he has worked so hard to achieve would be put in jeopardy. I told all of this to Antonio, deep into the night. He bantered and joked that a palace in Lisbon might please him as much as a palace in Goa. He would take great satisfac-tion in parading down the street in silken finery just to give apoplexy to the wellborn to whom in his younger days he had to tip his hat and make way. Though I don’t discount the promise of riches, I think one last adventure appeals to the soldier in him. There is also an unspoken bond between us, the bond of two, one later than the other, who have turned their backs on what others expect, to live as they choose.

Tell Uncle I will return. But to you, I say I do not know. I can’t speak with certainty in these uncertain times. Not because I may lose my life to brigands or beasts of the jungle, but because I have gained my life by coming here. When we were young boys, we sat shoulder to shoulder in the synagogue, surrounded by our dark-clothed elders. I felt like a man, a miniature man. I saw myself in those men and couldn’t wait to become one of them. Now I’m not so sure. Sometimes I think I could never return to the cages crafted by Israelite and Gentile: to be locked up at night by the Gentiles or confined every hour of the day by the gaze of my fellow Israelites.

I can’t imagine going back to become another old Jew among old Jews, thought by his neighbors to be just like them, to think as they think, feel as they feel, to be one of them, interchangeable, replace-able.

Or will I grow lonely for the sounds of the Israelites, the sound of prayers in the thick warmth of the synagogue? Maybe one day I will wake up and on my daily rounds the sound of monastery bells and the smells of a fish stall will carry me back to Venetian days and Rialto mornings. Then again, I may grow to embrace ever more tightly the freedom my strangeness allows me here. Maybe I won’t want to give up cradling a mango in my hand or sampling a slice of papaya offered by a smiling woman in the market. Perhaps my strangeness will fade, and I will just be Abraham, the foreign devil who fell in love and stayed.

Forgive me, Joseph, if I seem not to know my mind. I can retrace the route over sea and land that brought me from Venice, but I can’t return to who I was. I will leave my dark coat and pants behind when I leave for the countryside. I looked at these clothes tonight and wondered whose they were. They don’t fit me anymore. That person in dark clothes and of somber mien never saw the sun rise from the ocean’s edge or from behind a line of palms, never stood in the middle of an empty street and opened his arms wide to the day, never let his heart speak. That person walked narrow alleys and rarely looked up. Now I see the stars. Now I see all “the beautiful things that Heaven bears.” Now I live in “the shining world.” There is much to be done before we depart.

Your cousin,

Abraham

I went to the special Buddha who looks after women bearing children and asked him to return me safely to the city before the baby comes. Khaing has brought many babies into the world, and I will be safe when my time comes. The Buddha entered the world from his mother’s side, next to her beating heart, and my child comes too from the heart. If my prayers are heard, he will be a boy.

My son will be a man of the city, and he should begin life here among men of breeding who hold his father in high regard. His father has the soft hands of a city man and is not fit for the mud and muck of the paddy field. He says he would make a good scarecrow, but he couldn’t frighten away a baby dove. The crows will feel his gentleness: they will land on his outstretched arms and dot the fields in black.

What my man does for me today, I will do for him tomorrow.

When my son is strong limbed, I will put my fears aside. I will leave my fate to the Buddha and travel across deep water and lands filled with strangers.

Khaing will stay back—she says she is too old for the trials and dangers of the road. She was born in the city and believes she is fated to die here. I pray that day is distant and peaceful.

I have cleaned the house and weeded the garden. Khaing will look after the betel vines and the orchids that I have planted. It would sadden me if they were to wither from neglect. I wrapped a few strands of my hair around one of my wedding hairpins; and when no one was looking, I buried the pin beneath the bamboo trellis. No one told me to do it. It simply seemed the right thing to do—a way to protect this house from harm and draw us safely back. We go to my village and the house where I lived, but this is the house where I was born.

2 September 1599

Dear Joseph,

You know that I am not the cousin you last embraced, when it isn’t yet dawn and I’m already awake. Antonio will be here soon, and I want to write one more letter to you—but I pray it is not my last.

Win and I buried jewels and reals under the durian tree in his garden last night while everyone was asleep. Many men here prize its fruit more than gold, and Win believes that even the greediest invader will steal the fruit and spare the tree. Even if he is old and blind when he returns, he says he will follow the fragrant stink to our treasure, like an X on a pirate’s map.

I take only what I need and what can be carried, which is not much—rice, dried fish, some cotton sarongs, the holy Torah, my Dante, and for Mya a small idol of the Buddha. Win leaves his silks and silver in chests at the godown but doesn’t expect to see them again. There is so much that now seems unnecessary. Mya is a city in which everything is found, and there is nothing else that I need.

She spent yesterday sweeping the house, washing the cooking pots, cleaning the hearth, as if the New Year were approaching. I think she believes that if she acts as if we will return, we will, and all will be here when we do. Mya doesn’t want to anger the spirits by leaving the house dirty and dusty, as if she were abandoning it forever. As I write, she and Khaing are rolling up and tying our straw mats for the journey. They are the last things to go into the cart. The room seems so empty without them. She is saying what I think is a prayer over the place that has brought us blessings beyond riches. I debated whether to leave the mezuzah, afraid that if I take it from the door frame, it will be the cause of our not returning; but I don’t want an infidel to desecrate God’s holy words, so it travels with us to our new home, however temporary it might be.

Beneath my prayers I share a bit of Mya’s superstition, and am afraid that if I write as if this were my last letter to you, I will make it so. You know my absence has made my love for you burn more strongly. I can only repeat what I have said before or which hopefully these letters will convey. Don’t think I am not returning because I love you or Uncle less: it is that I love Mya more and choose to do nothing that will bring her harm.

Pegu has made me choose. My feet trod the hard cobblestones of Venice, but I floated through life on the expectations of others. I came here because it was expected. I came here the obedient nephew.

I thought I was a good man, but I was only obedient. I thought I was a free man, but I simply did what others told me to do and believed I was listening to the commands of my own soul. Not all lessons are learned when we are young. I have learned that to do what is right is an act of will, not the blind acceptance of what others say. I chose to sleep with the brides. I chose to take in Mya. I chose her for my wife, and I choose to stay here. I will never again hide behind the easy words “I have no choice.” I will never again speak of fate as if the stars have set our path. If I have acted unwisely or played the fool, it wasn’t the stars that were the cause. The self, the self that sleeps or denies itself, that is the cause. Remember me, Joseph, not as the man who was asleep but as the one who has awakened.

Do you remember when you were five and I was seven, and Uncle talked for days about the comet that streaked across the sky in a great reddish arc? I didn’t see this celestial wonder but remember Uncle’s excited words about the beauty of the night sky. While these visions have passed into the bright lore of memories, men who study the stars with lenses and numbers see in that comet a challenge to all those who believe the heavens perfect and unchanging.

A new century approaches: new worlds above us are revealed, new worlds beyond our imaginations open with each ship that sets sail from our shores. Some despair navigating under stars that shift and change their paths. Dear cousin, we shouldn’t despair that we are unmoored, that we, like the stars, are not constant and unchanging.

We can choose our own course under the broad heavens. To choose is to set sail in strong winds and rough waters. But oh, where the stars and winds may take us.

There is so much that is unknown.

It is dawn and we must go.

Your cousin,

Abraham

I will lullaby my son to sleep with tales of his father.

When I walk to the fields, I will bind him to my chest and speak to him of this good man. Before he can run away from my words, before he can speak of foolish things, or hide behind his silence, I will tell him of his father. Someday when he is a man, he will speak of his father and say, “Thus I have heard.” The market stalls were empty, and the temple grounds full. Those leaving prayed for the Buddha’s protection on their journey, and those staying prayed for the Buddha to fill the hearts of their enemies with compassion. Win said better to pray that their arms grow tired from hoisting the king’s treasure onto carts, so that they are too weak to lift their vengeful swords. The guards had deserted their posts, and the high wooden gates swung open, leaving the city to its fate.

Some of our neighbors sat glassy eyed on their verandahs, too frightened to leave or too overwhelmed by the unknown that lay ahead to raise a finger or give a command as their servants scurried about. Your father was a clear-eyed general. He chose what to take and what to leave behind. He lifted chests onto the carts, and tied them down. Of course, he didn’t invite the perils we faced—what compassionate man would? But he seemed to come alive preparing for the dangers before us. As if he welcomed the chance to show with deeds his love for me and his affectionate gratitude to Win.

As we made final preparations, Win joked with your father that perhaps he would be reborn in his next life in a more martial calling. Whatever anxiety he felt, your father kept it concealed. My people, he said, are used to fleeing from cruel kings. They have learned to live lightly. What is a few weeks’ journey in the forest, even a few months’? Someday, he said, he would tell you the story of his people wandering in the desert for forty years. I could tell by his solemn manner that what he said was true—this was not a tale to quiet my fears at the hour of our departure. But it did.